Portland Timbers fans not only showed up for the sold-out home opener in Major League Soccer last Thursday. A sizable overflow crowd watched from home.

Portland's 2.8 metered market rating was the highest in the nation for the ESPN2 broadcast of the Timbers against the Chicago Fire. Chicago's rating was .3.

The game's overall rating was .2, which translates into 183,000 households and 214,000 viewers nationally. That was on par with ESPN2's broadcast of a Philadelphia-Toronto MLS game that aired on the corresponding Thursday last year.

The national rating on ESPN Deportes, the network's Spanish-language channel, was .7, up from .5 for the Philadelphia-Toronto game last year.